Whitefish Bay Chief of Police Robert Jacobs talked with Kevin Buckley, Village Spillage.
There are many questions about why the KNOWN drug house where Madison Kiefer overdosed was allowed to stay in business.
Buckley writes:
Concerning the Kiefer tragedy, and specifically the Laughrin "drug house" .. the police were indeed aware of many complaints neighbors had made, and had over the years, tried to catch Laughrin doing bad deeds.
But the police have to play by rules .. they need probable cause and warrants to enter buildings. Apparently, citizen complaints about shady looking dudes (or middle school girls at midnight) frequently visiting a home isn't enough for a judge to sign off.
He explained that the Sunday of the tragedy, it took a Milwaukee County DA, with officers, hours to write up paperwork and affidavits, to get a judge to sign off on a search warrant for Laughrin's house.
The WFB PD received many tips, from pictures of people entering the house, to license plates of cars in front, taken by neighbors. Roberts said they follow up on all of them, trying to create a pattern where they can wiggle some probable cause and step in. Sadly, this was never achieved.
The Chief explained, that "when one thing was tried and failed, we went to another .. we were taking it seriously."
Charles Benson reports:
Neighbor John Kishline lost track of how many time he called police. "It's hard to say - over two years I'd guess minimum 20 times, it could have been 40, I lost track," he said.
He lives on Berkley Blvd., right next door to Matthew Laughrin, the 22-year-old man who faces possible homicide charges for Madison Kiefer's death.
Records show that police were also called numerous times by someone inside Laughrin's house for drug use, underage drinking and criminal activity. The most interesting was three months ago when Matthew's mother told police about possible drug dealing activity.
"It was pretty clear that people were coming here to buy drugs. That was my calculation," said Kishline.
Kishline isn't alone. Another neighbor said she called police several times and was assured police knew exactly what was going on in that house and that they were investigating.
This is ridiculous.
Jacobs can't claim the police department took the activities at that house seriously.
Play by the rules? Come on.
Two years of specific complaints. TWO YEARS!
I don't buy what Jacobs is trying to sell. If the police want to shut down a house, they can do it.
FACT: The house at 4852 North Berkeley Boulevard in Whitefish Bay was a KNOWN site of criminal activity, but the drug house kept operating and would be operating today if not for the death of Maddie Kiefer.
Is it playing by the rules to wait for someone to die before shutting down a drug house?
If that's the case, the rules suck.
2 comments:
Has it occurred to anyone that the "drug house," may have been a police operation which was part of a larger investigation? Or, maybe it was part of a larger operation to help populate the state's jails and spur the growth of the private sector of that industry, whose numbers from the recent PEW Research report indicated that large outlays of state money would be needed to upgrade and build new facilities over the next ten years. Keep up the illusion of serious crime by fostering low level drug use and you get the public support for private enterprise and bigger police budgets. Possibly more of that unregulated free market capitalist enterprise gone wrong?
Yeah, that's the ticket.
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